Along for the Ride

by Christina Schwarz

  Once Bonnie could have won this woman over with a smile. But Bonnie’s smile was not what it had been. “I was just giving them these. They were setting on a picnic table a ways back.” Bonnie tipped her head to indicate the road south. From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed her own nose and the witchy little growth at its tip. “Some little girls must’ve left them behind, and I figured they needed a new home.” As she held the dolls out, she perceived how worn they’d become simply by riding in a car. The paint of their swimsuits and their wavy hair was flaking off where the sun had baked them through the windshield.

  The woman leaned from the waist and stretched out her hand without moving her feet, so as to keep her distance and her place half inside the door. Bonnie was forced to take another step, bobbing to get the foot on her bad side to touch the ground, as if she were dropping a curtsy to a queen. The woman snatched the dolls in one hand and ducked back inside, letting the door slam shut behind her.

  CHAPTER 69

  That evening Clyde worked the car into a patch of woods near Terre Haute, and Mary and Raymond barely got themselves and a blanket behind a bush before they started rutting. Overhearing Mary’s attempts at coquettishness and her squealing expressions of pleasure was even worse than listening to her carping. Henry announced his intention to collect some wood and stalked off.

  “I’m sick to death of that washerwoman,” Bonnie said. “I don’t see why they have to ride with us.” She spoke quietly, although it was obvious that Raymond and Mary were not listening.

  “We’re a gang,” Clyde said. He dropped several guns on a blanket and began taking one of them apart. “Raymond wants her. I got my girl. He can have his.”

  Bonnie pushed her finger into the cigarette pack she’d started that afternoon, hoping to find one stuck in the corner. “It’s not the same. I’m not the same.”

  “Course, you ain’t, but that don’t mean he can’t have nobody.”

  “Well, let him have her. I don’t know why we don’t tell the both of them to move on. Reach me another pack. I’m out.”

  “That was the last of ’em.”

  “It is not. L.C. brought us that whole bag. You just don’t want to get ’em for me.”

  “No, you ate ’em all. I saw that was the last one, when I gave it to you this afternoon.”

  “Why didn’t we get more in Peoria, then?”

  He shrugged. “It was after Peoria I saw.” He eased a long stick with a bit of alcohol-soaked rag at the end into the barrel and worked it around with a look of concentrated pleasure.

  “You got what you need.” Bonnie crossed her arms. “And you don’t give a fuck what I need.”

  “You smoke too much anyway.”

  He wasn’t even going to let her pick when to fight. “What else am I supposed to do? At least you get to drive. All I do is sit there and watch nothing go by.”

  “You want to go home? I’ll take you home. I’ll take you home, and you won’t have to ride with me no more. Is that what you want?”

  “What I want…! What I want…!” She’d leaned forward, lifted one of the guns from the blanket, and waved it wildly, groping for some means by which she might be satisfied. “I want more goddamn cigarettes!” she said finally.

  “Get ’em yourself!” He lunged, and she dodged, twisting her shoulders and throwing her arm back to keep the gun from him. They fought so loudly and wildly that they finally attracted the attention of the lovers, who came out from behind their bush and stood with their arms around each other, egging them on with crude comments. And although eventually they had to quit yelling, they jabbed at each other all through dinner that night, and in the morning Bonnie’s eyes were swollen, her feelings still wounded, and her upper arm black and blue. She limped on her crutches, haughtily refusing Clyde’s help, over uneven ground and matted weeds to the creek.

  When Mary found her in the mud, unable to climb back up the steep bank, Bonnie was forced to cling to the other woman and had to press her cheek against Mary’s sweaty neck.

  “That man don’t appreciate you the way he ought to,” Mary said. “Here you stuck by him, when, with your looks, you could of found someone else easy. He ought to treat you like a queen.”

  “He makes me so mad saying it’s all him,” Bonnie said, relieved to make her case. “If it weren’t for me, I’ll bet you couldn’t pay them papers to put his picture in.”

  “Well, honey, you just let me know when you’ve had enough,” Mary went on. “I got some knockout drops. You pitch a couple of them in his Coca-Cola and you and Methvin come along with me and Ray. We’ll take Clyde’s money and leave him cooling his heels here. He sure deserves it, after what he done to you. Just think of him waking up without no car, no money, no girl, and no one to boss. That’d be something to see.”

  * * *

  If Mary had been more astute, she might have known from the warmth with which Bonnie and Clyde looked at one another and the way they let their bodies soften and touch that her scheme had backfired. They drove into the business district of Terre Haute, and Clyde pulled in front of a dirty Chevrolet among a smattering of parked cars in front of the shops. Then he turned suddenly in his seat, leveling his scattergun at Raymond and Mary, who were cuddling in the back. “Get the fuck out!”

  “What the fuck?” Raymond and Mary instinctively slid to opposite corners of the car.

  “You ain’t my partner no more. If you don’t know why, ask her.” He gestured with the gun at Mary, who gasped and pressed herself tighter against the back of the seat.

  “Raymond! Are you going to let him talk to me like that?”

  Raymond was already opening his door. “Get out. Let’s leave these losers to theirselves.”

  CHAPTER 70

  They were driving to Gibsland, Louisiana, so that Henry Methvin could visit his people. Uniting to purge themselves of Raymond and Mary had elated Bonnie and Clyde, but Clyde’s euphoria sank with the sun, and by the time they were bedded down beside the car somewhere in western Tennessee and had sipped the last drops in the flask, he was morose.

  “I’ll write a letter,” he promised in a wild whisper, rubbing the purple blotch on her arm with an intensity that made her wince, as if by doing so he could erase it. “I’ll tell them you never robbed nobody. I’ll explain that the killings was all me. I got you into this, and you done nothing but ride along.”

  “Shhh. Whatever you did, I did. I’ll follow you to hell,” she whispered dramatically.

  “But why don’t no one else? I got plans. I got a reputation. I got a lot of success. Why don’t no one want to follow me, the way they did Jesse? Everybody I get with, they think they know just as good or better than me.”

  “You got the kid.”

  They both looked toward Henry, who was sleeping with his back to them, curled in a ball.

  * * *

  The Methvins turned out to be a weedy family whose sagging bungalows sprouted at the ends of underused and overgrown roads in the swamps and thick pine groves around Black Lake. If Ivy and Avie Methvin were more circumspect in their welcome than Bonnie and Clyde, who considered themselves to be Henry’s saviors, might have expected, Bonnie was accustomed to the ambivalence of parents who were at once loving and disapproving, fearful and perversely proud.

  “Yer gonna git my boy kilt,” Avie said, pressing her sleeve to her eyes. She’d given them sweet tea in glass jars, but when she moved around the porch with the pitcher, she gave a wide berth to Clyde and the rifle he’d leaned barrel up against his chair.

  “Now, Mother, it’s no use…” Ivy began.

  Clyde interrupted. “Don’t you worry, ma’am. Them tommy guns the laws got can’t make no headway with a new Ford like the one we’re in. Your boy’ll be all right.”

  Nevertheless, the Methvins insisted that Henry stay separately from Bonnie and Clyde while they were in town. “I got just the house for the two of you to hole up in,” Ivy said. “The old Cole place, yonder by Cecil and Clemmie’s,” he explained to
Henry. “Folks around here are so scart, they even left the beds and chairs and all be, but I doubt y’all will flinch at some old TB.”

  Bonnie should have known that an abandoned house in Louisiana would be no different from one in Texas. The place was, indeed, furnished, but the beds were full of dirty feed sacks, empty cans, and animal feces, and the floors were worse. The windows were glassless holes and the doors were too warped to close. Worst of all, from Clyde’s point of view, was the house’s situation at the end of a narrow dirt road hemmed in by pines.

  “I know Ivy’s trying to help,” he said, “but he’s too innocent-minded to see that this is a born trap.”

  They continued to live out of their car and spent most of the day driving. The spring, still so grudging in the north, here was fully committed to greening and blooming, and the land undulated in feminine curves. Here, they could disappear behind a protective screen of sweet-smelling pines, and even the ground on which they spread a blanket to sun themselves was sandy and soft. It invited roots, and Bonnie found herself susceptible to a fantasy she’d long since banished.

  Bienville Parish wasn’t far from Dallas, but it was outside of Texas, far beyond the reach and, presumably, even the interest of Sheriff Smoot Schmid. The Eastham raid—Clyde’s preoccupation for so long—was finished; they had plenty of money from the bank jobs they’d pulled with Raymond. Why couldn’t they buy one of these charming gingerbread-roofed houses on a sweet piece of land and start over?

  When she’d embroidered the idea long enough to give it weight and texture, she presented it to Clyde. They were safe among the Methvins, who knew everyone—who were everyone. Clyde agreed that they could arrange some kind of secret purchase, and they spent several days playing at choosing property. They wanted to go to Dallas for Easter, but after that, Mr. and Mrs. Howard promised each other, they’d come back and settle down.

  CHAPTER 71

  April 1934

  The rabbit is an Easter gift for Emma, but Bonnie, who plies him with lettuce and carrots, has had the joy of him for several days. Of course, he leaves his calling cards here and there on the mohair upholstery. The pellets are dry, easy to brush off, hardly worth mentioning.

  “Does he have to do that?” Clyde says. “This is a nice car.”

  Bonnie gently draws her hairbrush through the rabbit’s fur. “Doesn’t he remind you of Snowball?”

  “He reminds me of Boy,” Clyde laughs. “The way he stares, all twitchy-like.”

  “How about we call him Sonny Boy?”

  “Sonny Boy stinks.” Henry’s been bellyaching about not being with his family on Easter Sunday and has started pulling on the bottle early.

  “You stink,” Bonnie says, pressing her nose into the rabbit’s downy fur. “Let’s give him a bath in the river, Clyde. Make him pretty for my mama.”

  Sonny Boy despises baths. He writhes and beats at the water with his strong back legs, giving Clyde a long, deep scratch along the forearm, but Bonnie is able to rub a bar of soap into his pelt long enough to generate a few suds. He shrinks pitifully when they pull him out. His soaked fur sticks to his skin, making his tummy stand out round and vulnerable as an infant’s.

  At first, it’s a pleasure to swaddle his trembling body in a towel and press him against her breast, but instead of calming, his shaking becomes more violent. “He’s too cold!”

  “Well, warm him up,” Clyde says.

  “I’m trying, but he’s shaking like anything! Shh, shh,” she murmurs. She chafes at his matted fur with the sleeve of her coat. “C’mon, baby, you’re all right. Oh, Clyde, he ain’t… oh, God, he’s passed out! I’m afraid he’s going to die. I think we might have killed him! Stop! Please, Clyde! Stop!”

  “What’s the use of stopping?” Henry says.

  “We can get a fire going,” Bonnie says. “We have to warm him up.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Clyde says. “A fire in the middle of the day? To heat up a goddamn bunny?”

  “Yum, yum. Roast rabbit.” Henry rubs his palms together.

  “That isn’t funny!”

  “Who said it was a joke?”

  “Shut up the both of you and look for a good spot.”

  If Bonnie hadn’t been so panicked, Clyde may have searched for a more out-of-the-way place, but as it is, he takes the first that presents itself, a stretch of grass beside the unpaved Dove Road on a rise above Highway 114. Every so often, a car floats past down below on the highway, distant enough to look and sound more like a machine in a picture show than a real automobile.

  To Bonnie’s relief, the rabbit responds to the warmth of the fire and is soon nibbling at the grass. She strokes him idly. It would be all right now to get back in the car and drive on, but they have nowhere to be until later, when they’re going to meet her mother and Cumie, and maybe Marie and L.C. and Billie. Clyde has fallen asleep across the back seat, and she’s inclined to let him be. They’ve continued their precaution of sleeping only in shifts at night, two hours at a stretch, so they’re never adequately rested.

  It’s April 1, exactly a year since they moved into the apartment in Joplin, planning to live like ordinary, happy people for a week or two. She resists the urge to wallow in regret. Next year this time, maybe they’ll have that place in Gibsland. For now, she’ll be like darling Sonny Boy and savor the balm of the spring sun and the tender grass. She smooths the skirt of the new red dress Clyde’s bought for her, as if stroking her own fur.

  When she reaches for the bottle on the running board next to Henry, he flinches. “I just want a sip. What are you so goddamn jumpy for?”

  He motions at the highway. “This place is too open. Anyone can see us.”

  She shrugs. “They’re too far away and going too fast. To them, we’re just any old car, two boys and a girl. No one special.”

  She helps herself to a few more swigs and then cuts herself a bit of lemon peel.

  “Better get your bunny.” Henry lifts his chin toward the rabbit, which has hopped to a point at which the hill begins to slope down precipitously.

  W.D. would have collected Sonny Boy for her, Bonnie thinks, as she limps across the grass.

  If they don’t want to attract attention, maybe she shouldn’t be wearing a red dress. Maybe they shouldn’t be driving a car with wheels yellow as crocuses.

  * * *

  On the highway below, three motorcycles appear, their drivers wearing the stiff navy jackets and flat-topped caps that announce they are the law. Bonnie stands over Sonny Boy and watches, waiting for them to pass on down the highway. One of them does. The other two exit onto Dove Road.

  Despite her lurching gait, she can be quick. She scoops up the rabbit and hurries to the car.

  “Clyde, get up! It’s the laws!”

  The rear car door is hinged at the back so, open, it can shield them from those who approach from behind. Only Bonnie, sitting on the front seat with the rabbit in her arms, can see the BAR that extends from Clyde’s arm. Tall Henry stands on the far side of the car, his shoulders above the roof.

  The laws jounce slowly toward them, paying more attention to controlling their bikes on the uneven surface than to the black automobile with yellow wheels. They obviously intend to provide assistance to Sunday drivers with engine trouble, not apprehend notorious criminals.

  When Clyde turns to Henry and says softly, “Let’s take ’em,” Bonnie knows he means to kidnap them. She’s at once annoyed that this will mean they’ll miss their rendezvous with their mothers and pleased at the opportunity for fresh company. The explosion beside her makes no sense. Nor does the sight of the lead policeman and his bike toppling sideways onto the road.

  “What the hell?” Clyde whips a quick, furious look at Henry.

  The second cop fumbles at his chest pocket and removes a handful of shells. Bonnie sees one dribble from between his fingers and bounce onto the road, while he struggles to unstrap a sawed-off shotgun from behind his seat. He’s a small man and young, and her instinct is to r
etrieve the dropped shell for him and to help him steady the bike. No, she says to him in her mind. Go. Go! The words are so loud in her head that she feels as if she’s shouting them, but no sound is coming out.

  It’s Clyde who speaks. “Stop,” he says. “Leave it.”

  But the young law doesn’t leave it. He’s jackknifed the shotgun over his arm now, and he’s pushing the shells in. Another escapes his shaking fingers and falls to the road. Clyde’s shoulder shifts.

  “Stop!” she screams, her voice finally pouring out, rough as the whiskey she’s been downing.

  But the men pay no attention to her.

  Now both laws are on the ground, the small one on his back, as if sunbathing, the large one in a pose of exaggerated contortion, the way a child might fall in a game of Ring Around the Rosie.

  From the other direction, a car appears, driving toward them on Dove Road. Clyde turns and steps into the road, his scattergun erect, and the machine stops with a shriek and then spurts backward, its wheels clawing at the dirt.

  * * *

  Incredibly, behind them, a stream of bullets bangs out, as if the motorcycle cops have only been playing possum. Bonnie ducks, shielding Sonny Boy’s body with her own. But when she turns to look, it’s Henry she sees in the road, standing over the two policemen. He’s riddling them with his BAR, and their bodies jump in response to the assault, as if the bullets are bringing them back to life.

  * * *

  Bonnie could not have balanced on her good leg and wielded the BAR in that fashion, but it makes a good story in the papers the next day to say it was the woman who went back and shot the fallen officers. On the following day, the paper reports that the woman was heard to laugh as she did so, laugh and crow at the way “his head bounced like a rubber ball.” The article adds that the fiancée of one of the officers wore her wedding dress to the funeral.